Ministers With Balls

As predicted, all the others ended up in prison.

"All 10, all 10, all 10, all 10," Wainright says. "And those kids were real good athletes but caught up in that scenario of Starter jackets, gold teeth, sneakers. If they don't hurry up and get some men or some people who really want to dig in and intervene and give them some real-life skills and prepare them for that next level, there's going to be a whole lot more of those 10s."

But Wainright can occasionally count a success.

Kenneth "Pooh" Oliver, 24, remembers the first day he went to Don Bosco. He was so young that his little hands couldn't dribble; instead, he just slapped at the basketball.

His parents had separated and were barely surviving — his mother in and out of jail for theft, his father always struggling to put food on the table. Oliver found afternoon asylum at Don Bosco. The first day he walked inside, he spotted a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair.

Wainright was waving him over.

"We bonded the first time we seen each other, son-and-dadlike," Oliver recalls. "Walking down from my projects into the community center, there was just something about Calvin that stood out from all the workers there. Just how he took control of things and how he wanted to help you. That was his satisfaction."

The skinny 9-year-old reminded Wainright of himself at that age. Wainright knew about Oliver's troubles at home and offered to take care of him for a few months in the middle of Oliver's third-grade year.

Oliver says those months with Wainright made him realize that life didn't have to be so hard. "It was real good," Oliver says. "Coming home to a hot meal, having your own room. Even though he wasn't dad, he just felt like dad. Instead of drying off with my shirt, I could dry off with a good towel after I got out of the shower. Instead of eating sugar and bread, I got a good meal."

Oliver practiced hard and became the first freshman point guard to start under famed Raytown South High School coach Bud Lathrop. He soon earned a spot on the all-metro team, was nominated to play in the All-American game and made all-conference, first-team all-state.

But because of Wainright, Oliver saw beyond basketball, realizing the importance of getting an education and setting goals. This season, he was named starting point guard at Missouri Western State University.

The rest of the kids in his neighborhood were dropping out of school, wearing colors and selling drugs. "Just imagine every day waking up and walking to the park and seeing someone getting robbed, or walking to the park and seeing someone getting shot," Oliver says. "Any given day, Sunday through Sunday, 12 to 12, it really didn't matter."

More than 30 years had passed since the riots, and the core was still on fire.

Among the first boys Wainright had coached at the 43rd Street John T. Thornberry Boys Club was Pat Clarke. The kid had earned the nickname Scarface when he was 4: After running wildly through the house, he sprinted into the bathroom, where his mother was fitting his Easter suit with a razor blade; she instinctively raised her hands to stop him and accidentally sliced her son's cheek.

When he started school in the early 1970s, Clarke's mother made sure that he left each morning wearing clean clothes and dress shoes. The neighborhood boys snickered, calling him a pretty boy. "If you grew up and you didn't have on a name brand, you be cracked on and picked on every day," says Clarke, who's now 43. "I had a fight every other day."

A rebellious loudmouth by his early teens, Clarke started trading his time at the Boys Club to hustle drugs. Baseball was his first love, and he could hurl a fastball straight through the strike zone. But that didn't earn him respect among his peers. Cashing in on drug sales did.

Clarke still wanted to play professional ball. But after he failed to make the cut during tryouts for the Kansas City Royals in 1991, he gave up on that dream.

He was 28. He realized he'd done little with his life except help perpetuate the destruction of his own neighborhood.

So Clarke organized a sports program for kids and turned his nickname into an acronym: Show Courage, Appreciation, Respect For All Children Everywhere.

In 1992, the first summer of his program, Clarke put together three SCARFACE baseball teams with kids between the ages of 10 and 12 who lived around 43rd Street. His three sons played on those first teams, and Clarke says other players were handpicked from the streets.

Before school let out for the summer, Clarke drove around the neighborhood. Whenever he spotted a kid riding his bike or hanging out, he invited him to join one of his teams. If the kid wasn't in school, Clarke figured, he probably wasn't getting much guidance or discipline at home. If Clarke could get a boy on the field, he might be able to reach him.

The SCARFACE league lasted four years but was soon overshadowed by the new Boys and Girls Club-sponsored program called RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner City), which started around the same time. Clarke later joined that league so he could continue coaching.